TERRE HAUTE — This is a story about two men who made a good decision, who did the right thing, who decided that being good coaches happens by caring more about their players than about just winning games. It’s also about a little boy who has had a moment in the sun, an instance that will probably stay with him for the rest of his life, and who, hopefully, knows that even though there will always be good people nearby to help him, the best things in life often start with having the courage to take a chance.
This tale, as well, is about a whole host of other people: folks who, if they didn’t know it already, discovered that even the most intense rivalry doesn’t really mean very much when a true moment of magic happens.
Allen Cobb is the dealership operations manager at Fuson Buick, Cadillac and GMC in Terre Haute; he’s also the president of the town board in Montezuma, a father of two, and a husband. And in his spare time, when he can find it, Allen is the fifth- and sixth-grade basketball coach at the small Parke County town’s elementary school. Allen just happens to be a former student and assistant coach of mine, too; he even took my job when I hung up the whistle.
One of Allen’s players this past season was Jarot Walters, in many ways a most-typical fifth-grader with the most-typical interests. One desire near the top of his wish list was to play on the basketball team.
That’s when his parents stepped in and told him that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea, because even though Jarot is typical in so many ways, he deals with something that most kids don’t: A stroke after heart surgery as an infant left him with a good deal of paralysis, particularly on his left side.
Jarot’s parents, Linda and Darin – both of whom just happen to have sat in my classroom years ago – have tried to make their son’s life as normal as they can. They just didn’t know if basketball was doable.
In stepped Jarot’s grandma, Cheryl Walters, who just happens to be our school secretary and a great lady. She called Allen to see if Jarot could sit on the bench with the team; basketball means a lot to her grandson and her grandson means a lot to her. Allen, with the help of his youngest son (sixth-grader Brennan), talked to Jarot, and soon had the youngster next to him on the bench (I should say next to the spot where Allen sometimes sits …). Within a week or so, and at the urging of his wife, Terry, who just happened to play for me in the old purple and gold (I’m not saying how long ago that was), Allen had Jarot in an Aztecs’ uniform, and the little guy was running drills with the team.
Allen said, “That really started me to thinking about somehow, some way, getting Jarot into a game.”
Brennan, who himself deals with autism, knew Jarot when they attended a developmental preschool together. Allen added, “As a parent of a special-needs child, I think I may see things a little differently. As I watched Jarot in practice, I thought there had to be a way.”
That’s where Steve Hartman comes into the picture. Steve, 23, and pursuing a business degree, is the fifth-grade basketball coach at Rockville Elementary. Allen approached Steve before the Rox and Aztecs met in a regular-season game last December and asked him if he would mind if, after the game had been decided one way or the other, they could work out a way to get Jarot into the action to shoot a free throw or two. Steve told Allen that he didn’t care what the score was or who was winning; he and his team wanted to be a part of getting Jarot onto the floor.
“When Allen first talked to me about a little boy who would never really get a chance to play in a game, my heart just went out to him. I was just so impressed with Jarot and his love for the game — what an incredible individual he is,” Steve said.
“My kids’ reaction to this whole thing was special, too. I told them in the locker room before the game, and it was so cool to see how they felt about it and about Jarot. Many of them know him, and they were very excited about it,” he added.
So, a plan was put into action. It even involved the referees, one of whom I just happened to know since he played in three sports against my son in high school, a big redhead by the name of Robert Harrison. With three minutes to go in the game, the whistle was blown, and Allen stepped toward Jarot, who had no idea what was about to happen.
“It’s your time, big fella,” Allen told his player. “We need you to shoot two free throws for us.”
By that time Jarot, very much afraid, and a little dazed, walked onto the court, and the fans, both those dressed in purple, and those in blue, realized what was happening and started to cheer. Shooting with only his right hand, he drew both the bank board and the rim on his first shot, but missed. After Harrison nudged him a bit closer to the basket, he carefully eyed the basket, wound up, and banked the second one in.
The entire gymnasium erupted. The Aztecs’ coach ran out to the free throw line to embrace his player, and soon both teams and coaching staffs were lined up to give him a high-five or shake his hand or pat him on the back. And there were three minutes left to play …
A whole host of people besides Allen and Steve helped make Jarot’s day a memorable one. For instance, Allen’s brother, Don, and Buddy Wilson — who just happen to be former students of mine, too — worked with Jarot in practice every day. Rockville’s scorebook keeper, Marie Wimsett, insisted that Jarot’s point was placed into the record and that it was shown on the scoreboard. I guess you never know; a hopeful grandma here, a supportive crowd there, and a pair of parents who were scared but brave, can move mountains.
Isn’t it remarkable that in an era in which we are strafed with the negative, with stories in the news about this athlete’s indiscretion, that politician’s poor decision, that today, in this space, you got to read a story about people who had the opportunity to do the right thing, a good thing, and did it. How fortunate I am to have known so many of them.
Doing things right, well, that’s good business. But it just so happens that doing the right thing is a whole different ball game.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or write to him C/O the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Mike will be speaking and signing his books at the Brazil Women’s Reading Club on March 16, and at the Clinton First Baptist Church on March 17. Visit his Web site at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: It just so happens that I have a good story for you
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
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Whitney Houston Funeral to Be Invitation Only
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New Details in Search for Missing Utah Mom
Trial Opens for Ala. Man in Bride's Diving Death
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Baltimore's 'Crime Stopper' Is a Basketball Star
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First Person: Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
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Obama: Good US-China Ties Help the Whole World
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And the Winner for Best Super Bowl Ad Is...
Obama's New Budget: The Winners and Losers
School Pays Students to Attend Class
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Ultimate Tazer Ball is a Shocking New Sport
Shakira Attacked By Sea Lion
Modern day treasure hunter searching for $3 billion prize
What Happened Inside Whitney's Hotel Room?
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VS Models Wow for V-Day
Olympic Swimmer Proposes on Podium After Big Win
Kate Upton MLB 2K12 Commercial
Watch: Whitney Houston's Golden Hearse
Scarlett Johansson's Bikini P-D-A
Man Allegedly Drowns Wife While Scuba Diving
Glee Pays Tribute to Whitney
Wash. becomes 7th state to okay same-sex marriage
Romijn's 60 Pound Weight Loss
The 'Celebrity Apprentice' Cast Meets Donald Trump
Kissing contest heats up
Hugh Hefner's Son Arrested
Jacqueline Kennedy's personal papers released
Did Tyler Perry Have a Secret Wedding?
